Irish internet of things firms set new standard for indoor GPS accuracy
About Symmetry Electronics Team
Established in 1998, Symmetry Electronics is a focused global distributor of wireless connectivity solutions, sensors, and audio-video technologies. Offering comprehensive design support and available-to-ship inventory, Symmetry is committed to helping engineers accelerate time to market, reduce costs, and offer modern solutions for their IoT designs. Acquired by Berkshire Hathaway company, TTI, Inc. in 2017, Symmetry Electronics is part of the Exponential Technology Group (XTG) – a supergroup of electronic component distributors and engineering services firms working together to advance the electronics industry. For more information, visit www.symmetryelectronics.com.
Two Irish internet of things (IoT) players have joined forces to create the world’s first ever ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna range for centimetre-level indoor positioning.
Wexford-based Taoglas, a maker of IoT antennas, collaborated with DecaWave to create a new class of indoor radio antennas, accurate to a centimetre.
Last year, a $2m investment by Taoglas in an IoT centre in San Diego revealed the firm to be a major player in the emerging IoT space.
Also last year, DecaWave achieved the milestone of shipping 1m IoT chips around the world.
Taoglas has co-developed the UWCCP.01 circularly polarised chip antenna exclusively with DecaWave, the first mass-market antenna specifically designed to enable a new generation of autonomous applications.
The UWB antennas were designed for use with the DecaWave DW1000 chip, and are also compatible with any other UWB sensor modules on the market.
Since its launch in December 2013, more than 3.5m units of the DW1000 have shipped across multiple industries.
“Antennas play a key role in our customers’ applications. Performance is a given for customers but the capability to adapt to the constraints of the applications – size, shape, electronics environment – is equally important, as end products get smaller and smaller,” said Ciaran Connell, CEO and co-founder, DecaWave.
The indoor IoT revolution
Image: Taoglas
Taoglas’ range of UWB antennas, designed in its Munich engineering centre, enable centimetre-level positioning and angle-of-arrival applications, including asset tracking, follow-me drones, healthcare monitoring, smart home services and other applications that demand high-performance indoor localisation capabilities.
The antennas offer high efficiencies across a wide spectrum of frequency bands, from 3GHz to 10GHz.
“Today’s emerging applications require very precise indoor localisation of assets, objects and people,” said Ronan Quinlan, co-CEO, Taoglas.
“UWB can work as a type of ‘indoor GPS’ to help solve the precision dilemma for indoor applications, bringing much greater levels of precision than current technologies. We optimise complex antenna performance parameters such as the Group Delay, Polarisation and Fidelity Factor.
“Taoglas’ first-to-market line of UWB antennas are designed to help our customers capitalise on this need for real-time precision localisation, with the quality, reliability and flexibility they’ve come to expect from working with Taoglas.”
Source: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/indoor-taoglas-decawave-iot-antenna-chip
About Symmetry Electronics Team
Established in 1998, Symmetry Electronics is a focused global distributor of wireless connectivity solutions, sensors, and audio-video technologies. Offering comprehensive design support and available-to-ship inventory, Symmetry is committed to helping engineers accelerate time to market, reduce costs, and offer modern solutions for their IoT designs. Acquired by Berkshire Hathaway company, TTI, Inc. in 2017, Symmetry Electronics is part of the Exponential Technology Group (XTG) – a supergroup of electronic component distributors and engineering services firms working together to advance the electronics industry. For more information, visit www.symmetryelectronics.com.